ON THE ABSENT MOTHER

Dr.ART JANOV- Author

There is an article today about stressed out babies who get anxious even when mother is absent for two minutes.(http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-1305892/Six-month-old-babies-stressed-ignored-minutes-mothers.html Their effects last until the next day. Levels of stress hormones soar. Conclusion: babies need their mothers. Oh wait! Maybe it is more than that. Yes, we need mother and father love but what happens when the absenteeism goes on and on?

There is just so much stress we can take and then what happens? Primal Pain. That is, the system has reached its asymptote and shuts down. Repression begins its life. So what? We now have a secret life; that is, there are pains and all of their concomitants, stress hormones, less or more thyroid, less natural killer cells; go on agitating and aggravating the physical system. And when pain gets compounded time after time, neglect, abandonment, violence, the underground life begins to wear the system down, attacking the most vulnerable organs. It is not one pain but pain piled on top of more pain, the daily threats, ignoring, left alone, and you can add your own life here. What is bad is that we do not often know we are in pain but the body knows. It speaks volumes, screaming through higher brain amplitude, faster brain frequency, higher cortisol, and so on. That is why we not only take the word of patients but measure them every day before and after sessions. The patient does not necessarily lie but she is often contradicted by her measurements.

I never knew that my frenetic and constant movements as a kid, the going and going, was the result of pain; I never felt it. I acted it out. But if one had looked at cortisol levels we would have understood. I doubt in my day we could have even measured cortisol. I just got my high-school records for my biography. Note after note says about me, “nervous.”

Isn’t it wonderful that the human system has a governor that shuts down many functions so we can survive? We become unconscious to survive. That is the miracle. So we have a hyperactive brain; is that so terrible.? Only if you don’t mind dying of Alzheimers or a stroke. That hyperactive brain is not normal. It is a reaction, a survival tactic to keep us unconscious so we can navigate in the world. It is super active due to repression. How do we know? There are major changes in the brain when patients have done this therapy. We have done four different brain studies (UCLA, Copenhagen, Rutgers, and in-house). The results are consistent. Moreover, we see great changes just after a session when the body temp, blood pressure and brain activity diminish. The body and brain are all of a piece. They are related, so when we measure just one aspect, say, blood pressure, we are missing out on the relationships to other aspects.

What is important about the above is that we mistake the deviations occasioned by the imprinted pain as bad and unhealthy. So then we have the biofeedbackers trying to correct the person’s brainwaves when they should be what they are. Or we do other measures to break down blood pressure, or we do EMDR to change anxiety states without once asking why are they deviated? Why is that heart racing? It is trying to survive against the onslaught of pain. It should race.

I was being slight facetious about dying of a brain disease but not entirely. When you see, as I have, month after month, year after year, patients reliving enormous early pains, you realize how the brain has to cave in eventually. No organ can withstand that pressure forever. Reliving and feeling is life saving.